A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Designing Effective Development: Lessons from the Eisenhower Program - December 1999

Chapter 5

The Relationship of District Management to Features of Professional Development

In this chapter so far, we have described several aspects of the district management and operation of Eisenhower-assisted activities. In Chapter 4, we examined the characteristics of district portfolios of professional development. Here, we draw together our results in these two chapters by analyzing the extent to which district management practices are related to particular structural and core features of district Eisenhower professional development portfolios.

As described in Chapter 4, we developed measures of Eisenhower portfolio characteristics. Specifically, they are (1) the percent of the districts? Eisenhower participations in reform activities; (2) the average time span of the districts? activities, both reform and traditional; (3) the extent to which activities have collective participation¾ participation by whole schools or groups of teachers (e.g., all teachers from the same grade or department); (4) the number of opportunities for active learning offered in in-district workshops or institutes; and (5) the amount of emphasis the district places on targeting professional development activities to teachers of special populations of students (e.g., teachers from Title I schools).

In Chapter 4, we noted that these measures differ by district poverty and size. Here, we take this analysis of portfolio characteristics one step further by presenting a model that describes how the district?s role in shaping, implementing, and planning professional development, described earlier in this chapter, is related to the structural and core features of the district?s portfolio of activities.

To analyze how the various components of the legislation?those addressing the district?s role in design, quality, implementation, and targeting of Eisenhower-assisted professional development activities?are associated with each other, we developed an explanatory model, shown in Exhibit 5.11. This model takes each major component of the legislation, as measured by variables constructed from our survey of Eisenhower coordinators and described in this chapter and Chapter 4, and examines its relationship to several other components.

The model is an implied logic model, in that we hypothesize a sequence of events. Specifically, as Exhibit 5.11 depicts, we assume that districts first build a vision of professional development through alignment and co-funding, then implement and monitor the vision through planning and continuous improvement efforts. These actions then result in particular features of the district portfolio of professional development, such as the percent of teachers in reform types, the average duration of activities, the degree of collective participation, opportunities for active learning, and the district?s targeting practices. It should be emphasized, however, that components of the system are likely interactive, and may occur simultaneously. For example, a reform-oriented district may practice superior vision-building and implementation, and design activities with more high-quality components and more targeting, all at the same time, because of the district?s orientation toward reform. Our data are not longitudinal, so we cannot test the causal ordering. We can, however, identify the strength of relationships among variables. We suggest a logic of events to help to explain how the process of designing and implementing district-provided development might work; but our model should not be considered to exclude the possibility of two-way effects or an alternative temporal ordering.

We use ordinary least squares regression (OLS) to analyze the paths (or associations) between variables. Only relationships that are significant at the .05 level are reported. Since contextual factors may influence the design and implementation of district portfolios, we have included several district characteristics as control variables in our model: district poverty level, consortium status, the log of the number of teachers, ⁸the interaction of the log of the number of teachers and consortium status,⁹ and cluster status. (For a detailed description of all of the variables in the model, see Appendix G.)

As Exhibit 5.11 shows, co-funding is the strongest predictor of the features of district portfolios of Eisenhower-assisted professional development. It is related directly to increased targeting (b=.17),¹⁰ a higher percent of teacher participations in reform types of professional development (b=.15), and more collective participation (b=.14), and it is indirectly related to more opportunities for active learning and increased targeting through its relationship to increased continuous improvement efforts (b=.16) and more teacher participation in planning (b=.16). Coordination in terms of working with schools and professional development providers proved unimportant in our model, but alignment is significantly related to implementation, and structural and core features of professional development. Alignment predicts more participations in reform types of professional development (b=.12), which in turn is associated with a longer span (b=.40), and also more continuous improvement (b=.16). These results support the notion that building a vision of professional development through alignment, and having a critical mass of funds available, made possible through co-funding, are instrumental factors in fostering the provision of high-quality professional development activities. Further, having activities aligned with state and district standards and assessments may indicate that districts are providing guidance and using data for continuous improvement efforts.

Although this analysis demonstrates the importance of alignment and co-funding, which are emphasized in the Eisenhower legislation, we still do not know as much as we could about the extent to which districts practice alignment and co-funding, or the processes through which they engage in these practices. Developing a deeper understanding of how alignment and co-funding work would help us to understand their link to other implementation efforts, and ultimately, to the provision of high-quality professional development activities.

Continuous improvement is another variable that is associated with outcomes that are emphasized by the legislation, but whose actual operation remains unclear. Continuous improvement efforts, in terms of providing guidance, needs assessments, and evaluation, have a moderate association with both increased opportunities for active learning (b=.20) and increased targeting (b=.17). Our analyses of the sub-scales that comprise continuous improvement, reported earlier in this chapter, show several potentially important findings: 1) districts? use of indicators is not prevalent, and case studies suggest that for those that do use indicators, their use is somewhat perfunctory; 2) evaluative methods do not include linking professional development with teacher actions or student outcomes; and 3) many districts offer particular types of guidance and support to schools and professional development providers, but offer little guidance related to the use of data. This indicates that while districts play a role in guiding schools and professional development providers, districts may lack the capacity for sophisticated use of data in decision-making, planning, and evaluation.

In terms of planning, Exhibit 5.11 shows that district-level planning (as opposed to school-level planning) is related to activities of longer span (b=.11), and teacher participation in planning is related to activities with more opportunities for active learning (b=.20) and more targeting of teachers of special populations of students (b=.16). These relationships support our findings reported earlier in this chapter. High-quality professional development can be planned at any level, and planning at the district level is not the same as implementation at the district level. As our case studies show, there are examples of both high-quality professional development planned at the district level and low-quality professional development planned at the school level. This reinforces the need to clarify the 80-20 rule, to determine Congress? intent in encouraging school-level planning and implementation of professional development activities.

Exhibit 5.11
Relationship of District Management to Features of Professional Development

¹⁰ B represents the standardized beta coefficient, or the standardized regression coefficient, which indicates the strength of the relationship between the two variables. For example, the beta of .17 for the relationship between co-funding and targeting means that for every one standard deviation increase in co-funding, there is a .17 standard deviation increase in targeting. The arrow from co-funding to targeting indicates that targeting was regressed on co-funding.
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[Differences in Management and Operation of Eisenhower-Assisted Activities by District Poverty and Size]

[Chapter 5 Summary and Conclusions]